A village fair in Provence on the evening of Bastille Day, 2006.
Category Archives: Photography
Das Kapitol
Bring back spelling!
Democracy…
… or the tyranny of the majority.
Reflections
Under the Fort St. George bridge, Friday 21 July, 2006. Did the graffiti artist intend the reflected image to be the ‘real’ one?
Nice panorama
Nice airport, evening of July 19, 2006.
Railing
Sean French wrote to say that the picture reminded him of the terrifying Betjeman poem, Devonshire Street W.1, about a man coming out of his doctor’s after having been told he’s terminally ill:
No hope. And the iron knob of this palisade
So cold to the touch, is luckier now than he.
On reflection…
… this didn’t work. Still, it was worth trying.
Push medium
A 100 megapixel chip!
Technology Review has the story.
San Juan Capistrano, CA-based Semiconductor Technology Associates (STA) has designed the world’s highest-resolution digital camera chip, capable of holding an image composed of more than 111 million pixels. By comparison, the best consumer cameras take shots of 12 to 16 million pixels, and an average computer monitor offers about one million pixels.
The imaging chip, which is a charge-coupled device (CCD), was designed for use in telescope cameras that map stars and ever-moving objects in the solar system, says Richard Bredthauer, STA’s president. But this large-scale chip — it measures four inches square — could be useful in more fields than just astronomy, he says, including high-resolution microscopic images of proteins, military surveillance applications, and even civilian mapping projects that require detailed aerial photography.
It’s four inches square. Too big for my Hasselblad. Bah!
The Cambridge skyline
The construction of the so-called ‘Grand Arcade’ proceeds apace. Soon this lovely medieval city will have exactly the same kinds of shopping mall as Gateshead or Dubai. A glimpse of a previous generation of commercial vandalism (in this case the early 1970s redevelopment of Lion Yard) can be seen in the foreground. (Fittingly, that building was the first — rented — location of the Microsoft Research lab.) When I am Supreme Ruler, Lion Yard and Grand Arcade will be bombed flat using precision-guided munitions. (The occupants will be given due warning and time to collect their belongings before fleeing: I am a hard man, but fair.)